Chloe's Leavers Blog - finally :)

James Loughlin with his debut blog...

Hi there Yew Tree members and Yew Tree followers, yes this is my first blog after being a part of Yew Tree for about roughly 7/8 months it’s about time I finally did one so just bear with me whilst I get my thoughts and feelings on track throughout this.

So to really get into things I will have to back up a bit to talk about the New Year that is 2012. Now me being who I am I can’t help but look back on things that have happened within the past year and see what I really enjoy about myself.   This year was a bit different for me I had life decisions to make which took a lot of looking into,  I decided that I would quit my extra 3^rd year at 6^th form because it wasn’t going to help me in my future endeavours. Whilst deciding this I wasn’t sure what I would do with my time apart from try and earn money and my Gold and Black sessions, luckily Sarah came to my rescue and now I couldn’t be happier with everything I have going on.

This is the first official week back at Yew Tree for all companies, and I have had the pleasure to see from the perspective of an onlooker, a volunteer and a member. It has been a hard week for me but one I have really enjoyed and makes me look forward to all future projects I will be a part of. Not to mention I also turned 19 but that’s another story.

So to step aside from how good Yew Tree is, I would like to tell you all something I have encountered within this week of Yew Tree. It is that of letting yourself be free and open to all possibilities.  Whilst working with several year 4 classes at Normanton it made me think to what I was like when I was their age, a shy little boy who would cry whenever he had to go up on stage or had to do any form of acting (and look at me now haha) but these children were excited and enthused to be doing something on their feet and energetic whilst learning new skills and techniques.  When given their creative task I didn’t see any of them say they didn’t want to perform it or shy away from the task at hand, they embraced it and made it into their own (even if it did involve a lot of boys “play fighting”) it opened my eyes to how when you are that age you are open to take more risks and enjoy yourself more.

My next point in this is that of helping with the current filming of the scenes of Encounters being performed by Danny and Joanna at the Hepworth next month.  Whilst I was doing the very menial task of holding the boom mic, I found out that transferring stage to film can be uncomfortable for the actor but once you have gotten over that fact you are creating something good and beautiful for the camera which is rather different to a stage audience, so being open and willing to work with the camera itself will help create the same feeling as if it were on stage (that is something to bear in mind for those who would like to turn to the screen instead of the stage).

And finally what I have witnessed and experienced within Black and Gold company as well as Journey to X, is that of don’t be afraid to experiment with your character and movements, if you feel stupid and wrong doing it you are most probably doing the best thing you can do. It’s one thing trying to get the role and position and movements perfect the first time but unless you try and over do them and exaggerate them you will never truly know how much more animated and enjoyable your character/role can be, because let’s face it if you go too far you can always pull it back to something more reasonable.

Now I know this is probably ridiculously long for a blog and there is a lot to read but it is my first time and I would love it if everyone could read this (especially the older ones) and realise that there is still room for that freedom and randomness with your work and life to make things more enjoyable and exciting. And as my last point I would like to say that even though Yew Tree is a Youth Theatre it is more of a Youth Company in my opinion, where a Youth Theatre helps people gain confidence and helps those gain greater acting skills and everyone is close friends, a Youth Company looks out for the Youth of today making sure they enjoy themselves and learn new and exciting things on the way whether it’s what they want to do or not and thus becoming more of a family on the way.

So thank you for reading the far and hope I could enlighten and open some minds within this massive piece of text.